Crisis: what crisis? Google gets spooked over minor China outage

A MINOR glitch caused Google to panic yesterday evening and declare that Chinese access to the search engine had been "fully blocked" – the search giant backed down several hours later saying that they had overestimated the extent of a minor outage.

As of 8am this morning, Beijing time, users can access Google services normally. However, in a sign of ongoing sensitivity and fraught relations, last night Google’s relationship with China's internet censors appeared to have had taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

Google's Mainland China dashboard was updated indicating the blocking of the company's search, advertising and mobile functions. In reality, due to the way in which Google measures accessibility in China, the company has conceded that their “machines could overestimate the level of blockage," as the company’s Chinese dashboard is not a real time tool.

Had the blockage been the result of an official action, by the Chinese authorities, it would have been the most serious crackdown since Google stopped complying with China's censorship rules in March. The episode indicates the ongoing state of Google’s relationship with the Chinese authorities.

It is just three weeks since the Chinese government renewed Google’s internet business license, after Google placed a landing page on Google.cn via which users could gain access its uncensored Hong Kong-based page.

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